Journal of Counseling Psychology
1989, Vol. 36, No. 2, 252-256
Copyright 1989 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0022-0167/89/$00.75
COMMENTS
Positive Uncertainty: A New Decision-Making Framework
for Counseling
H. B. Gelatt
Los Altos, California
Changing one's mind will be an essential decision-making skill in the future. Keeping the mind
open will be another. Positive uncertainty helps clients deal with ambiguity, accept inconsistency,
and utilize the intuitive side of choosing.
Over 25 years ago the Journal of Counseling Psychology
published an article of mine entitled "Decision Making: A
Conceptual Frame of Reference for Counseling" (Gelatt,
1962). In the article I presented a totally rational approach to
making decisions. The approach required decision makers to
define their objectives clearly, analyze information rationally,
predict consequences, and be consistent. A compatible frame
of reference for counseling was then constructed.
Now I have changed my mind about decision making. In
my opinion, what used to be the way to decide, no longer is.
Decision making is not what it used to be, or at least the way
we view decision making is not. This means that the old
counseling frame of reference ought not be what it was.
Modern counselors, like modern physicists, are looking at a
different world. Today physicists have had to give up their
previous ideas about the order of the universe. The new order,
the basis of the new physics, is not to be found in the particles
of matter. Rather, it is found in the minds of physicists. What
one observes appears to depend on what one chooses to
observe. The order of the universe may be the order of our
minds, and the mind is where decision making occurs.
Quantum physics is showing that there is no such thing as
a physical world "out there" (Gleick, 1987; Wolf, 1981 ). There
is no such thing as objectivity. Everything is interconnected
to everything else in an unbroken wholeness, and the mind is
the connector. But can there be a new science of this new
order? Can psychologists have a new psychology of counseling
and decision making? Counselors may have to give up some
previous ideas about order in decision m a k i n g - - o r at least be
willing to take on a new perspective. Albert Einstein once
said: "Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn
and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing
a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich
environment" (Zukau, 1979, p. 19).
It is in this context that I write about a new strategy for
making decisions and a new framework for counseling. The
new view of the decision-making w o r d does not mean de-
stroying the old approach and erecting a completely new one.
It means discovering new connections between the old view
and new insights. There is one more caveat before I begin. It
is said that "the master's house will never be rebuilt by the
master's tools." It may be impossible to construct a new
counseling framework if psychologists insist on using only the
tools of the old model.
A quarter century ago the past was known, the future was
predictable, and the present was changing at a pace that was
comprehendible. The rational, objective decision-making
frame of reference for counseling was appropriate then. Today
the past is not always what it was thought to be, the future is
no longer predictable, and the present is changing as never
before. In fact, today even the status quo is in a state of flux.
If everything is changing, ought not the strategy for decision
making and the counseling frame of reference be changing? I
believe the answer is yes.
Therefore, I am now proposing a new decision strategy
called positive uncertainty. What is appropriate now is a
decision and counseling framework that helps clients deal
with change and ambiguity, accept uncertainty and inconsistency, and utilize the nonrational and intuitive side of thinking
and choosing. The new strategy promotes positive attitudes
and paradoxical methods in the presence of increasing uncertainty.
This is not to say that classical decision theory or rational
decision strategies of 25 years ago, including my own, were
wrong. They are simply no longer sufficient for today's complex, changing world. Rather, this is to say that theories can
change and even theorists can change their minds. Changing
one's mind will be an essential skill in the future.
The old and new decision making is like the old and new
science. The past laws of science and a knowledge of the
present gave persons an ability to predict the future. It showed
an external world that existed apart from the mind. It had
scientific objectivity. The old decision strategy was appropriate for the linear, objective, scientific methods of the past.
The old decision dogma relied on the left brain, pursued
certainty, and asked for consistency.
The new science has shown that in some cases it is not
possible, even in principle, to know enough about the present
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to H.
B. Gelatt, 30 Farm Road, Los Altos, California 94022.
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to make a complete prediction about the future. Science
learned that it is not possible to observe something without
changing it. Observers cannot eliminate themselves from the
picture. Reality is a subjective creation in a personal frame of
reference. The new decision strategy uses the whole brain,
accepts uncertainty, and asks for flexibility. The new decision
approach is appropriate for the quantum scientific methods
of the future.
Positive uncertainty is not the first or only attempt to break
away from the scientific, rational model of decision making
in counseling. For example: Janis and Mann's (1977) conflicttheory model emphasizes the client's belief system regarding
risk taking and proposes emotional role playing and outcome
psychodrama as two counseling techniques; Krumboltz
(1983), in discussing unfounded, troublesome, and deceptive
beliefs, said in his preface, "One outcome of my study was
the decision that it is irrational to distinguish between rational
and irrational decisions" (p. ix). He suggested that the extent
to which a given choice is rational or irrational depends on
the point of view, including the beliefs and private rules, of
the person judging it. Harman (1981) said that societies have
one major decision-making problem: "poor choosing based
on a wrong belief system" (p. 5). From 14 propositions of an
emerging science of human consciousness, Harman concluded that "a rationale for good choosing" (p. 5) is choosing
with the creative-intuitive mind.
Other decision theorists have continued to study the human
problem of dealing with uncertainty. Kahneman, Slovic, and
Tversky (1982), in their review of the influence of cognitive
psychology on judgment research, discussed such topics as
the role of subjective probability, the psychology of prediction,
popular induction, the illusion of control, and improper linear
models among others. Their goal, however, was to find ways
to help clients become more rational.
Modern information society concepts and techniques were
integrated into human decision making by Heppner and
Krauskopf (1987). They discussed an information processing
approach and described personal problem solving more as a
complex, intermittent, and highly interactive process of coping than as a logical decision-making process: "We conceptualize real-life problem solving as involving the rational and
irrational, conscious and unconscious processes, as well as
cognitive, affective and behavioral processes" (p. 376).
Heppner and Krauskopf (1987) then related this conceptualization to the complexities of the various characteristics
of different problems and to the variety of personality differences among individuals. If one adds the systems view that
everything is connected to everything else, one can understand
why Ackoff (1974) called human problem solving "mess
management" (p. 21) or why March (1975) introduced "The
Technology of Foolishness" (p. 424) as a decision-making
approach to balance the technology of reason.
The business literature also has recently acknowledged and
promoted nonrational, intuitive decision making for managers. A change in attitude has occurred over the last 10 years
as a nonrational deciding process in business has been described first as "muddling through" (Golde, 1976) and now
as "creativity in business" (Ray & Myers, 1986).
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Heppner and Krauskopf (1987) noted that a lot of research
has already examined how people make decisions, and they
called the conclusions pessimistic: "People are often quite
unsystematic and irrational" (p. 376). My point in reviewing
this literature is to suggest that the time may be right for a
new approach to decision-making counseling. Should counselors help clients be more systematic and rational in decision
making or help them be better at unsystematic, nonrational
choosing? Or should they do both? Scientists and businesspersons are seeing their world differently. Can counselors?
The analogy of old and new science with old and new
decision making is a good one because uncertainty is at the
heart of the new science and also of the new decision making.
However, the new does not make the old obsolete. The new
discoveries have shown the limits of previous theories and
knowledge. The old way of looking at things is no longer
comprehensive enough. Counselors need a broader view of
decision making that utilizes the decision maker's nonobjective role and incorporates the constant presence of uncertainty. Counseling can then help clients do more than seek
certainty and avoid subjectivity.
With the positive uncertainty techniques, I am not actually
proposing a new decision strategy but proposing to make
commonly practiced strategy legitimate and part of a counselor's repertoire. Decision making is a nonsequential, nonsystematic, nonscientific human process. So is positive uncertainty. Three basic positive uncertainty decision guidelines
are ambiguous and paradoxical. So is life in the information
society. The three guidelines (not rules or laws) come from
my new definition of decision making: Decision making is
the process of arranging and rearranging information into a
choice or action. There are three parts to the definition: (a)
information, (b) the process of arranging and rearranging, and
(c) a choice of action. All three of these parts have changed.
Today, clearly the amount and availability of information
has changed. The process part of arranging and rearranging,
which happens in the decision maker's mind, is still the crucial
part for counselors. But now there is new knowledge about
this processing in the mind from computer technology, artificial intelligence, brain research, and the power of mind in
self-healing and personal growth. Psychologists know more
about rational thinking, but they also know more about the
importance of intuitive thought. The processing skills of decision-making clients (and counselors) need to come from
both sides of the brain; they need to be ambidextrous and
multifaceted.
The third part of the definition, choice, also requires a
change. Helping someone decide how to decide must move
from promoting only rational, linear, systematic strategies to
recommending, even teaching, intuitive, situational, and
sometimes inconsistent methods for solving personal problems or making decisions.
Does it seem paradoxical to be positive (comfortable and
confident) in the face of uncertainty (ambiguity and doubt)?
Yes. But that is exactly what a person will need in order to
be a successful decision maker in the future. Space does not
permit a full description of all of the potential decision strategies and counseling techniques in positive uncertainty, but
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the three basic guidelines related to the three parts of the
definition of decision making (information, the process of
arranging and rearranging, and the choice) are outlined
briefly.
Information Guideline:
Treat Y o u r Facts With Imagination,
but D o N o t Imagine Y o u r Facts
De Bono (1985) wrote "If you had complete and totally
reliable information on everything, then you would not need
to do any thinking" (p. 46). If one had such information, one
could go directly to choice without passing through the process
part. The process of arranging and rearranging information is
thinking. In an information society a lot of thinking is required. The new decision theory and counseling approach
recognizes three problems with information today.
First, facts rapidly become obsolete. (Reliability is limited.)
How long are the right facts true? What one knows for sure
today may not be so tomorrow. The rapidity of change in
today's society makes the tenure of knowledge very capricious.
What one often learns today is that what one learned yesterday
is no longer true. It has become misinformation.
Second, more information equals more uncertainty. (Complete information is rare.) Today one can get more information and faster than ever before. But the amount of information available almost always exceeds a person's capacity to
process it. This, together with the fact that one can know
more possible options and know about more possible outcomes, increases uncertainty. The more one knows, the more
one realizes what is not known. Like an iceberg, two-thirds of
knowledge cannot be seen.
Third, there is no such thing as innocent information.
(Subjectivity is present.) The new science has confirmed that
most information is changed by the process of sending or
receiving it. The sender or receiver is very likely to modify
information. What information is sent and received and what
it looks like depends on what is already in the mind's eye of
the beholder. The mind's eye is the mental faculty of remembering and imagining. It determines what one sees and knows.
Knowing how to get acquainted with one's mind's eye is a
good skill to have.
This new counseling framework must help clients understand that what they know is ambiguous, that their knowledge
is the tip of the iceberg, and that information is appraised in
the mind's eye. Getting the facts is still part of decision making
and counseling, but counselors must now realize that the most
important part is the client's attitude about these facts and
how they are arranged and rearranged in the client's mind to
formulate a choice. Clients need to learn to be uncertain
about what they know and to seek other, even different,
information or opinions. As Mark Twain once wrote: "It ain't
what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you
know for sure that ain't so."
Counselors ought to help clients to use their mind's eye
creatively yet cautiously. Using information to predict the
future and to prepare for what is predicted is likely to be
supplemented with skills in avoiding information overload,
recognizing information inadequacies, and rearranging infor-
mation into various possible futures. This provides opportunities for creative remembering and imagining.
Process Guideline:
K n o w What Y o u W a n t and Believe
but D o Not Be Sure
The new approach changes the decision maker's attitudes
about decision goals and rational objectivity. What the decision maker wants are considered decision goals. The old
decision theory and counseling approach to goal setting can
be summarized as: "If you don't know where you're going,
you'll probably end up somewhere else" (Campbell, 1974). I
have a corollary to this principle: "If you always know where
you're going, you may never end up somewhere else." If you
always know what you want, you may never discover new
wants. How do people decide on good goals, and how do
people make good decisions? These two answers should not
be incompatible.
Decision making should be as much a process for discovering goals as for achieving them. March (1975) presented
support for this approach: "The argument that goal development and choice are independent behaviorally seems clearly
false. It seems to me perfectly obvious that a description that
assumes goals come first and action comes later is frequently
wrong" (p. 420).
What the decision maker knows is considered rational
objectivity. The new science should make it clear that the
rational, objective approach is not always possible or desirable. The client's mind's eye is the heart of invention; it is
where reality is created. A balance between fact and fancy is
needed. If one cannot always be totally objective, one ought
to know sometimes how to be thoughtfully subjective.
"Be realistic" was the old counseling advice. Self-deception
and denial were the great sins to be avoided. Counselors now
know that it is not always a disadvantage to believe what
appears to be unreal. The new approach recognizes that denial
(refusal to believe the facts) and illusion (false beliefs about
reality) have their usefulness in coping. One's beliefs are
spectacles; they cause a person to see things a certain way.
When persons change their beliefs, they change their spectacles; they change what they see, hear, know, want, and do.
Beliefs determine how one behaves. The paradox is that denial
and illusion can be signs of pathology or can provide hope
and motivation to act.
This new counseling framework must help clients avoid the
most common problem caused by the old decision theory:
pretending one already knows what one wants. It is not so
much a question of should one really know what one wants,
but should one be encouraged to develop new wants? Always
starting with clear objectives discourages a person from making choices that lead to new experiences. New experiences
help develop new information, new values, new goals, and
new wants. Being uncertain about goals and wants leads to
new discoveries. Remember, "The only thing worse than not
getting what you want, is getting it" (George Bernard Shaw).
Counseling, in the future, will also need to help some clients
develop their subjectivity and challenge and change their
convictions. It takes courage--and counseling--to challenge
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and change one's own beliefs. This may be an essential skill
of the future. The most important part of the clients' future
may be their belief about it. The old framework gave a lot of
practice remembering the past but not much experience imagining or creating the future. Remember, the client's mind's
eye is the mental faculty of remembering and also imagining.
Beliefs about the future begin here. Harman and Rheingold
(1984) sum up the importance of belief: "Each of us has the
capacity to become much more than we think we can be, if
we choose to stop believing otherwise" (p. 16). Our decisions
today are an expression of one's beliefs about tomorrow. In
other words, one's choices today not only determine one's
future, but they also reflect what one believes the future to
be.
Cousins ( 1981) wrote about self-induced healing, and many
other writers and researchers have recently pointed out the
power of beliefs, among them: Goleman (1985), who discussed the thin line between "vital lies and simple truths";
Borysenko (1987), who wrote about "minding the body and
mending the mind"; and Zilbergeld and Lazarus (1987), who
described techniques for helping clients use their "mind
power."
The process of arranging and rearranging, in the mind's
eye, is where reflection, imagination, and creativity take place.
These are the new decision-making skills of the future. The
counselor of the future must help clients learn the importance
of these skills, practice using them, and integrate them into
their decision-making strategies.
Choice Guideline:
Be Rational, Unless There Is
a G o o d Reason Not to Be
The old decision theory and counseling approach taught
you to decide the rational way. It was not logical to use any
process that was not logical. Although counselors knew people
did not always decide rationally, they thought it was the best
way. After all, the science of the time was totally rational.
The new decision theory and counseling approach, supported by a new holistic approach to science, a creative
approach to business management, and an imaginative approach to medicine, now shows that decision makers are part
of their decisions. One cannot separate the decision from the
decider, just as one cannot separate the observed from the
observer. Holistic choice means using the right brain as well
as the left, reflecting on one's future as well as one's past, and
being flexible in decision strategies. The process of how the
decision makers decide is as important as the facts, truths,
and realities about the choices.
Support for this balanced deciding approach has come from
many sources: Capra (1982) integrated Western and Eastern
approaches to psychology and psychotherapy; Bruner (1986)
explained the "narrative mode," the part of the mind devoted
to the irrepressible human acts of imagination that allow one
to make experience meaningful; Zdenek (1987) showed how
imagery can change perceptions and help one "invent the
future"; Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) discussed the power of
human intuition in an era of the computer in what they call
"mind over machine"; von Oech (1986) provides "a kick in
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the seat of the pants"; and de Bono (1985) gives us "six
thinking hats" to help us think and decide more creatively.
Counselors will be helping clients remember and imagine,
reflecting backward and forward. Persons need to be able to
learn from their future as they have learned from their past.
Counselors will also be helping clients develop flexibility.
Flexibility, like reflection, is a two-way skill. It involves being
capable of responding to change and being capable of creating
change. Responding to change may mean changing old habits.
Creating change may mean inventing something new. Positive
uncertainty makes both easier to do.
The new counseling framework of reflection, flexibility,
and both rational and intuitive thinking will lead to inconsistency in choice. One cannot be flexible, adaptable, and
inventive and always be consistent. The future does not exist
and cannot be predicted. It must be imagined and invented.
There are two choices: One must invent the future or let
someone else invent it. The choice of action is where the
decision makers express their individuality; it should not be
done by formula. The counselor of the future must help
clients imagine and invent their own future.
Summary
Decision making is the process of arranging and rearranging
information into a choice of action. Positive uncertainty is a
new decision strategy with some paradoxical counseling methods, but it is basically attitude--feeling uncertain about the
future and feeling positive about the uncertainty. Attitude is
important in winning games, getting a job, recovering from
illness, and climbing a mountain. Therefore, it is not surprising that attitude is important in making decisions.
Positive uncertainty is compatible with the new science and
beliefs of today's society and incompatible with yesterday's
decision dogma. It involves ambiguity and paradox because
the future is full of ambiguity and paradox. In the future it
will help to realize that one does not know some things,
cannot always see what is coming, and frequently will not be
able to control it. Being positive and uncertain allows one to
be able to act when one is not certain about what one is doing.
Decision making has been hard to do by using the conventional wisdom of the past. Even with all the scientific formulas, sophisticated technology, and eloquent theories, making
up one's mind has been difficult. Rational strategy is not
obsolete, it is just no longer sufficient. We do not need new
dogma, just new decision tactics. The mind of the client, the
focus of positive uncertainty, will be the next great frontier.
Outer space gets all the attention lately, but inner space (the
human mind) will be the new arena for exploration.
The counseling profession ought to take the lead in continuing to explore this arena with new and creative research and
theory development. Counselors may also need to be willing
to validate the new exploration by developing some new tools.
If they only use the old tools, such as comparative research
and empirical testing, they may not be able to build a new
model. Counselors may become, as Thoreau said, "tools of
our tools."
The main purpose of counseling has always been to help
people make up their minds. Now counselors can add helping
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people keep their minds open and even teaching them how
to change their minds. The best final decision may actually
be a definite maybe.
References
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Morrow.
Received December 13, 1987
Revision received June 13, 1988
Accepted June 30, 1988 •